Sermons at Paradox Start Discussions Rather than End Them

This week at Paradox Church, we welcome back Kathy Lin for a beautiful and challenging look at 1 John 5:2-9. Drawing on her own journey of deconstruction, her background in psychology and religion, and her profound experiences as a hospital chaplain, Kathy unpacks the harm caused by authoritarian, punitive images of God.

What does it truly look like to live a life connected to God? In this message, Craig Hadley explores 1 John 4:7 and what it means to walk with God through authentic love for one another.

Does your faith feel like a system of control, or does it inspire wonder? In this continuation of our series in 1 John, we explore what it really means to "test the spirits" (1 John 4:1) in a modern world.

What if everything you were taught about sin was designed to keep you ashamed, not free?

In this opening message of our series on 1st John, Pastor Craig dives into the strange, drama-filled origin story behind one of the Bible's most feared words.

Pastor Craig Hadley takes questions LIVE from the congregation and attempts to answer them. He has not seen any of these questions ahead of time!

What if your disability isn't a punishment — and the healing you need isn't a cure?

"Who sinned, this man or his parents?" That's the question that opens John 9 — and it's a question that still gets asked, in different words, about anyone whose body or identity doesn't fit the frameworks we're handed.

In this guest message, Esther Loewen — a licensed marriage and family therapist and former pastor — walks through three places where the story of the man born blind in John 9 echoes her own experience, and the experience of many trans people today: being treated as a puzzle to solve rather than a person, the holiness of embodied transformation, and the demand to testify again and again before being believed. Esther shares pieces of her own transition story and ends with a question for the whole church to sit with: if God were doing something sacred in the life of a trans person, would you be able to see it?

On Pride Sunday, guest preacher Jaz Bowen-Waring (Lutheran pastor and founder of Queerfully and Wonderfully Made) brings a message rooted in Luke 4 and the incarnation: when Jesus stood up in the synagogue and declared, "Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing," everything changed.